


The Pink Glove

by SingingInTheRaiin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, I swear, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Magic, PTSD, Playing in the Snow, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, and again as adults, because I said so, completely unintentional, hm did I accidentally screw Thor so he'll never be worthy of his hammer?, meeting as children, time works slower on Earth than Asgard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 17:04:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20067523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingInTheRaiin/pseuds/SingingInTheRaiin
Summary: "The pink glove lay on the ground, almost covered by the dirty, slushy snow that surrounded it. For two people, that glove would prove to be one of the most crucial items in their entire lives. For everyone else, it was nothing more than an ordinary pink glove lying in the snow puddle, ready to freeze in place as night fell and the air grew colder."Tony and Loki have a chance encounter when they are both children. One single day where they are both truly happy. And then they meet again as adults, when they are each most in need of the other.





	The Pink Glove

The pink glove lay on the ground, almost covered by the dirty, slushy snow that surrounded it. For two people, that glove would prove to be one of the most crucial items in their entire lives. For everyone else, it was nothing more than an ordinary pink glove lying in the snow puddle, ready to freeze in place as night fell and the air grew colder.

“Why are you staring at that glove?”

The sudden voice coming from directly behind him startled Tony enough that he dropped his other glove into the same freezing puddle. His eyes widened as the tragedy seemed to play out in almost slow motion. He stared at the second fallen glove with obvious distress, and tried to remind himself that _Stark men are made of iron, Stark men are made of iron, Stark men are_\- and then he burst into tears.

,,,

Loki knew that he wasn’t supposed to explore any of the secret passages he discovered, at least not until after his mother and father had gotten the chance to look them over and make sure that they were safe. But Loki was practically a grown up already, if one took into account how much he took care of his older brother, and he was bored of only ever being the last to explore new things. That took all the excitement out of it if he knew from the start that it was perfectly safe.

So when he found a passage that would take him out of Asgard, Loki had felt as though he had little choice other than to grab a small bag of supplies and be on his way. The journey itself had taken an unknown amount of time, but it had certainly been worth it, as Loki had first stepped out into what was clearly a whole different world. 

Everything around him managed to look primitive and advanced at the same time, and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. And there were so many people, far more in just a few streets than he had ever seen in all of Asgard. And perhaps best of all, nobody knew who he was. No one stopped him to chastise him for acting ‘unprincely’, or to make fun of him for being strange and practicing magic. He had complete freedom to do whatever he wanted.

Of course, he had no doubt that if his parents actually noticed him missing, Heimdall would be able to find him easily enough, but he was going to make the best of his time here until he was caught and dragged home. It was lucky that Allspeak translated the strange languages being spoken all around him, so that Loki could truly enjoy everything about the atmosphere. 

He wandered around for a while, looking in various shops. When he noticed several people staring at him, he easily cast an illusion to make him appear more adult, and made his clothing mimic the style that he’d seen most so far, complete with a warm jacket. He found a few interesting things, but didn’t even know what the currency looked like to conjure some, so he eventually moved on.

Loki snagged some food from a cart while the vendor was distracted, and then wrinkled his nose in disgust after just one bite. Hopefully this wasn’t representative of all of this world’s cuisine. 

After a few hours, Loki knew that he was probably running out of time, and he hadn’t even figured out the name of this world yet. He resolved to do just that, but paused when his heart suddenly started racing in his chest for no reason he could discern. He turned in a slow circle, wondering if it was a warning of some kind of threat to his person, but there was no one else around in the small park he’d found himself in. 

On a second glance, he realized that there was someone else, a boy. He looked slightly younger than Loki- his real age, not the one he appeared to be at the moment- and had his head tipped down. Considering the cold weather, it didn’t seem like a good idea for a little kid to be out here all alone. Especially since the kid wasn’t even dressed in anything that looked like it would keep him warm. 

So Loki made his way over. He cleared his throat, but the boy didn’t react at all to the noise. Loki glanced down, and realized that the boy was staring at a glove that was floating on the surface of a dirty looking puddle. It was definitely too big for the boy’s small hands. “Why are you staring at that glove?” he blurted out before he could think of something better to say. 

Somehow the boy must not have heard Loki approach, because he seemed surprised by the question, and a second glove fell to the ground, next to the first. It quickly darkened to match the other glove as it was weighed down by cold water. There was a brief pause, and then the boy started crying loudly.

Loki froze. What was it about him that made it so impossible for him to ever get anything right? He was always messing up around Thor and his friends, which is why they always made fun of him, and he was always messing up and disappointing his father, and now he’d made this random child cry without meaning to. 

He quickly conjured up an identical pair of gloves, and frantically held them out to the boy. “Look, here, they’re the exact same!”

The boy quieted down, though there was still tears and snot dripping down his face, and he kept sniffling. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the gloves in Loki’s hands, and then glanced back at the ruined gloves that had fallen. “How did you do that?” 

Loki blinked once, still holding out the gloves. He hadn’t seen many signs of magic in this world, but the boy didn’t sound scared or disgusted, he just sounded curious. “I made them with magic.”

The boy’s eyes widened, and then he took the gloves. He looked at them carefully, turning them over in his hands, inspecting every stitch. Then his eyes teared up and it looked like he was about to start crying again. “They’re not the same.”

They looked the same to Loki, but then again, he hadn’t thoroughly investigated the original pair. “How do you know?”

The boy sighed, and handed the gloves back to Loki. Then he squatted down to fish the sopping wet pair out of the puddle. He held them up, away from his body so that the cold water didn’t drip onto him. “Ana made these for me. She made them big so that I could grow into them, and,” he opened one of the gloves to show the inside. “She put my nitials there.”

Indeed, there was a dark green line that said AES. “If it matters that much, I can just-”

The boy shook his head. “It’s not the same,” he said very quietly. “Ana made these for me.”

And then Loki realized that it wasn’t just a pair of gloves. Whoever this Ana person was, there was probably a reason that she couldn’t just make another pair. She’d obviously been important to the boy, and was probably dead. The pair Loki had conjured disappeared, and then he cautiously reached out for the boy’s gloves, which were starting to turn the tips of his fingers blue. “May I?” The boy seemed hesitant, but he did hand them over. Loki closed his eyes, and concentrated on drying them completely, removing the dirt stains, and avoiding ruining any of the stitchwork. When he was done, he handed them back. 

The boy looked at the gloves with wide eyes, and then quickly tugged them onto his hands, despite the fact that they were obviously far too big for him. Then he lunged forward and pulled Loki into a tight hug. Because of Loki’s current illusion, the boy only came up to his waist, but Loki was more focused on the fact that he was being hugged by a complete stranger because he’d done something that had been appreciated. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been hugged by his own brother, no matter how many times he helped Thor out. 

After a brief moment of hesitation, Loki returned the hug. Then he took away the illusion so that he only looked like himself. The boy seemed startled for a moment, but then just looked awed. “Wanna have a snowball fight?”

Loki blinked in surprise, but slowly nodded. He’d never had a ‘snowball fight’, though he could figure out what it was from its title. And it was actually quite fun to sling around balls of snow, much more than he would have expected. And the other boy was smart and easy to talk to, which was an added bonus. Loki didn’t want their time together to end. 

Once it got completely dark out, he cast a few simple spells to keep him and the boy warm so that they could keep playing. He found that he much preferred the flushed, playful look to the sobbing from before. At one point, his arm was grabbed, and he was tugged over to a particularly deep snow bank. “Come on! Let’s make snow freaks!”

Loki had no idea what that meant, but he copied the boy’s movements as they both carefully laid down in the snow, and then the boy began moving his arms and legs up and down to move the snow around. When they got back up, strange looking impressions were left behind in the snow. When Loki tried to get a closer look, he ended up leaving footprints all over his, and both boys started laughing. 

As it got later, the boy began to look tired, even though Loki felt like he had enough energy to keep going. But playing around in the snow by himself didn’t sound all that appealing, so he flopped down onto a snow covered bench next to the boy. They just sat there quietly for a little while, until Loki worked up the nerve to ask a question. “Who’s Ana?”

The boy took in a sharp breath, and then slowly exhaled, the puff of air appearing as a small cloud in front of him. “She wasn’t my mom, but she- she loved me. Her and her husband take- took care of me. She got sick, though. Now she’s gone.” He pulled his knees up to his chest, and it occurred to Loki just how tiny the boy was as he practically curled up into a ball and tried to hide the way his lips were trembling. “What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.

“Loki. What’s-” But before he could even ask the boy’s name, there was a flash of bright light, and then suddenly he was standing in Heimdall’s pavilion, facing his stern looking parents. Loki sighed, and shuffled towards them, ready to accept whatever punishment they were going to mete out. 

,,,

Tony jolted awake, panting and struggling to breath. He forced himself to take several deep breaths until he calmed down a bit, and then got out of bed and staggered towards the bathroom. “J, lights on, and start the shower.” He leaned forward, hands pressed against the cool marble top of the sink counter. 

When the lights turned on a moment later, Tony was able to stare at himself in the mirror. He looked like a complete mess, with his hair sticking up wildly, sweat coating his skin, dark circles under his eyes, and a frightened look in his eyes. He reached up to lightly tap against the casing for the arc reactor in his chest. It was still there, glowing that garish blue, haunting him.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to look at his reflection any longer. He wanted to ask Jarvis to call Rhodey, but he knew that Rhodey was usually busy with acting like an actual adult, and only had so much time for Tony. So instead he just requested his comfort playlist go on high volume while he took a shower. Though all the loud music and hot water in the world would never be enough to scrub away all of the blood on Tony’s hands.

Jarvis turned the water off once Tony’s skin began to get too pruney, and then Tony pulled on a quick pair of sweatpants and tank top. He took the elevator down to his lab, uncaring of what time it was. He already knew that he wasn’t going to be able to get any more sleep now that he’d been woken up. He just had too many nightmares to deal with. And the best way to deal with them was to avoid having to deal with them, of course.

Tony opened up the latest Iron Man suit that he’d been working on, and got to it, eager to lose himself in something that he was passionate about. He quickly got lost in the project, choosing to ignore the fact that the real world even still existed. 

So he was somewhat startled when Jarvis made an announcement that had nothing to do with reminders to eat or sit down. “Sir, you are being called from a blocked, untraceable number.”

Tony frowned, and leaned back, wincing slightly when his back cracked with the movement. “I’ll take it.” It was rare enough to get calls from unknown numbers that even Jarvis couldn’t trace, so Tony was intrigued. 

“Mr. Stark? My name is Maria Hill, and I wanted to talk to you about something that’s gone down in New Mexico…”

,,,

Finding out that he was adopted- or perhaps more accurately, kidnapped as a baby- was definitely not one of the high points in Loki’s life. To know that Odin had always planned on giving the throne to Thor, and had probably never even cared about Loki at all, hurt more than he cared to admit.

Following Thor to Midgard was a somewhat rash decision, half-baked plans of revenge floating through his mind. But when he actually arrived, he found himself taken aback. He was obviously in an unfamiliar town, but the details of it were familiar enough that he was able to connect it to an older memory. 

It had been many, many years ago, when he had followed a secret tunnel to a different world. He’d spent such a short amount of time in the other world that it had slipped to the back of his mind quickly enough. He’d never thought to ask the name of where he’d been for that one day. But looking around now, he knew that he had visited Midgard before.

Loki no longer cared about tracking down Thor. Instead, he just wanted to explore. And perhaps find the boy he’d spent that day with. Though that had been a long time ago, and since Midgardians were not a long lived place, it was most likely that that boy had lived and died long ago. But now that he was thinking about that nameless child, Loki couldn’t help feeling an urge to seek him out. That boy had been the first- and only- person to look at Loki’s magic like it was something amazing, and to hug Loki and be nice to him without expecting anything in return. 

He made his way through the sparse town he’d landed near, and wondered how he could get to a bigger city. Someplace with more excitement. He’d met that boy in a city, though he didn’t even know the name of it. Loki cursed his younger self for being too foolish to ask any questions at the time.

What Loki was certainly not expecting was for a random person he walked past to just freeze, and then suddenly reach out to grab Loki’s arm. Loki whipped around, prepared to rain misery and torture down on his attacker, but the Midgarian was just staring at Loki. Or presumably, he was, though there was a pair of dark sunglasses blocking his eyes. Did this man somehow know that Loki did not belong here?

When nothing happened after a few long seconds, Loki shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Let go of me,” he demanded.

The man let go instantly, and then reached up to remove his sunglasses. “I’m sorry, it’s just… Loki?”

Loki arched one eyebrow, silently asking for the man to explain how he knew Loki’s name. But even before the man opened his mouth, Loki was able to put the pieces together himself. The same big, brown eyes and dark, untamed curls. And he had told the boy his name all those years ago, and had appeared with an illusion of being an adult at first. Though the odds of actually encountering the same person within minutes of returning to Midgard seemed astronomically small. “You.”

“Ah, Tony. I’m Tony. I’m sorry for staring, it’s just… you’re actually real? I mean, I always thought that it was just some kind of fantastical dream. When my butler finally found me the next day, he kept saying it was a miracle that I hadn’t frozen to death out there, but when I told him about you, he said that I must have dreamt it up. But you’re here right now, and I…” Then he frowned, and clenched both of his hands into fists. “Or maybe I’m just hallucinating right now. It would be an unusual thing to do while sober, but with how messed up I am, I wouldn’t be that surprised.”

Loki took a moment to absorb that entire rambling speech, and then softly repeated Tony’s name out loud as he committed it to memory. “I can assure you that I am quite real. Though if anyone should be questioning this situation, it is me. I was not aware that Midgardians could live for hundreds of years, on top of the coincidence of seeing you again.” 

Tony blinked a few times, and then tilted his head to the side in a way that was absolutely not cute. “I’m thirty-seven. Do I really look that old?”

Loki narrowed his eyes. “That is impossible. The last time I saw you, you were but a babe, and it was over three hundred years ago.”

Tony snorted. “Come on, man, now you’re just intentionally trying to make me feel old.” He hung his sunglasses off of the collar of his shirt, and then jammed his hands into his pockets. “Though it is pretty crazy to run into you again. That was ages ago.”

“So you’re willing to believe in magic, but not the possibility of you being very old?”

Tony shrugged. “I think I would know if I was three hundred years old.”

Loki thought about it for a moment, but then decided that Tony was probably right. But he also knew for sure that he was that old. “What a bizarre universe we must inhabit,” he muttered. Then he realized that Tony was still just staring at him, and he arched one eyebrow.

Tony’s face flushed a light pink, and he finally ducked his head to break his stare. “Sorry, it’s just- I feel like if I look away from you for too long you’ll just disappear. It’s so crazy to believe that you’re actually real, after all this time of thinking that I was just imagining someone to help me cope with the loss of Ana.” Then he tilted his head up to look Loki in the eyes. “You did help, you know. Back then. I doubt you even remember much at all, if it was really three hundred years ago for you, but I was in a bad place and you brought me out of it just by being there.”

Loki blinked once. He couldn’t think of a single other time in his entire life that anyone had thought their life had been better simply for having him in it. On the occasions where people were kind to him, it was only because he was a prince and they wanted something from him. “Where are we?” he asked abruptly, not wanting to keep thinking about all of this so hard.

If Tony was surprised by the sudden question, he didn’t show it. “Puente Antiguo, New Mexico.”

“This is not the place we met last time.”

Tony laughed. “No, definitely not. I would definitely not survive small town life. We met in New York. That’s where I lived as a kid. Ah, but I’m here now because I’m supposed to help find this guy who…” he trailed off, a thoughtful look on his face. “Your name is Loki, and you can do magic, and you’re apparently over three hundred years old, and you just happen to be here at the same time as me. That’s not, um… Maybe this is a stupid question, but you wouldn’t happen to be the Loki from Norse mythology, would you?”

Loki had learned long ago that Midgardians looked at Asgardians as though they were gods, but he hadn’t really believed it. Or at least not that it was something they would still believe in these modern times. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, I was asked to come here to take a look at a fancy hammer that supposedly can’t be lifted, no matter how much strength and effort has been put into it, which I assumed was some kind of advanced technology, but now I’m thinking that it’s some kind of magic, and also everything else about you just kind of seems to add up that way. So am I right?”

Loki shrugged. “I’m assuming that most of your stories about me are inaccurate, but yes, you are correct.”

“So then that hammer-”

“Mjolnir.”

“Me-yol-near? is actually from Norse mythology too?”

Loki nodded. “Yes.” He hesitated for a moment before asking, “Would you like to learn more about it?”

Tony grinned. “Of course.”

,,,

Hours later, it occurred to Tony that he hadn’t even yet gone to the site where Mjolnir was waiting, because he’d gotten too caught up in his conversation with Loki. But he didn’t really care. He’d only taken Shield up on their proposal to investigate together because he’d had nothing better to do, and Jarvis insisted that it would be good for him to get out of the tower for a little while. 

While he hadn’t expected to once again encounter someone who’d made such an important impact on his life, he certainly couldn’t say that he was upset about it. Talking with Loki was nice, and it just felt right. He fought back a blush when he asked if Loki wanted to go back to his motel room with him to continue the conversation. He lost the battle when Loki said yes in a way that practically constituted as a purr. 

,,,

Frigga couldn’t keep the satisfied look off her face as she made her way into the bedroom. Odin glanced up from the papers on his desk, and immediately gave his wife a wary look. “What have you been up to now?”

Her grin grew wider. “Not much. Just making sure that there are enough coincidences left in the universe to make our children happy.”

Odin rolled his eye. “I don’t even want to know.”

As she got ready for bed, Frigga thought of a solitary pink glove lying in the snow. It had changed the lives of two people in ways that no one else would ever understand. But Frigga knew exactly what she was doing. If anyone else had been there that day- three hundred or thirty years ago depending on who asked- they wouldn’t have given a second thought to a busy woman brushing past a child, causing him to let go of one of his gloves. They would have had no idea what had been set into motion with just a single clumsy step.


End file.
